One thing we all know about most mobile and manufactured homes is that space is at a minimum. When we choose to live economically, we also sacrifice in some ways, and this includes living without much storage for our junk treasures.  Many of our older homes have the infamous “built in” dressers, closets, entertainment center/bookcase/gun cabinet fixtures in veneer fake wood grain and gold plastic trim.  Who doesn’t love that??!!

I often get an idea of what sort of furniture piece I want stuck in my mind and it just won’t let go.  It has to be just so high and so wide. It must have so many shelves and drawers and the baskets I picked out 2 years ago at Pier One on sale must fit on those shelves. Because, after all, that’s what I bought them for!

When we began remodeling rooms in our home, we decided that storage would be part of any design.  We may not always achieve that with parts of the build.  In that case, we make it happen with furniture.  For help with this, we found the fantastic website ana-white.com

It’s hard to believe that anyone who has a DIY mindset has not yet seen this site, but if you haven’t, you have to check it out.  We always felt comfortable ripping out walls and floors and rebuilding and redecorating, but never thought we would consider ourselves furniture builders.  Thanks to Ana, we do now.  She breaks down every furniture piece and shows you how to build it the most efficiently with shopping lists, cut lists, and directions on how to assemble with pics all along the way.  It’s a terrific community with visitors contributing their projects as well.  If you are particular about furniture or have specific needs, you will find a home there and you will surely find a dozen projects you’ll want to get started on soon, if not today!

So far for the house, we have built a rustic end table, with another to come soon, a knock-off Pottery Barn style storage bed for our room that has 6 large storage cubicles under it, a tall cube storage unit, a Baroque style entertainment cabinet, and built-in benches and book shelves. We’ve also built a child’s picnic table and a rose planter with a trellis. This Summer, we plan to build a corner sofa so we can relax outside on the new patio.

I want to share these projects with you so you can see that it can be done…even by you…if you just have confidence and take your time.  I don’t know what it is, but I often get stuck on this one thing…like door hinges.  I just don’t want to do door hinges.  I will re-surface a whole door opening, but I don’t want to mess it up when it’s all new like that so I hire someone else to chisel out the door hinge spots and hang the doors.  I was like that with furniture too, until I found Ana-white.com Not only did I find great stuff on her site, but seeing how pieces are put together helps you envision new designs and ideas that you want to create on your own and gives you the confidence to do it.

In this post, I’m sharing our entertainment cabinet.  We looked everywhere for one that would be high enough to cover the wires hanging from the TV that we hung on the wall.  We wanted one with a dark finish…something elegant, yet rustic…something that wouldn’t need a lot of dusting :-)  It came together like this:

[flagallery gid=4 name=”Entertainment Cabinet”]

This cabinet took us one weekend to build. We LOVE how it came out and it cost less than $120 to make! We won’t ever build anything without using the Kreg Jig again. It makes building SO much easier and faster. If you want more info about the Jig, check out my Amazon link in the sidebar to see the different types that are available. We have a kit that includes clamps, the jig, drill bit, screws, wood plugs, size chart, and tool box. I have never bought a tool that makes building more enjoyable than this tool, and I heard about it on Ana-white.com.

Have you come up with furniture solutions for your living spaces?  We’d love to see them! Do you have ideas you’d like to comment about?  Please share them in the comment section below.  We love to hear from you about what you’re doing or have done in your happy home.  The next piece on our to-do list is a coffee table that opens like a chest to match this cabinet.  What will your next project be?

Happy building!

The McGees